Wednesday, August 12, 2009

One Cent Per Fired Synapse

From the Archive of Knowledge:-A penny costs 1.4 cents to mint
-The Bible is the most shoplifted book in the world
-Glenn Beck and Bill Maher both identify as Libertarians

How much thought is given these days?

“This is a wonderful capital to cover things in because there’s an awful lot of information available despite the growth of secrecy and so on. For example, when I had the Weekly and there would be an explosion in a country I didn’t know a damn thing about, and I had to go to press in two days. I had to write an article for a weekly – that’s a little more reflective than a daily story. You can have room to move and a little extra time to give it depth. So what do you do? If it’s a country that depends on, say, copper, you go to the Bureau of Mines in the Interior Department and you get the latest report on copper. And the report on the copper industry will give you a sense of the basic social-economic factors that are working in that country, and you’ll understand it better. If it’s soybeans, you go to the agriculture department and get the latest few crop reports. I got a good hell of a news story before the Korean War when I discovered that the Kuomintang in China were buying soybean futures as if they knew something was coming, and then there was a Senate investigation, and they did know something.”

--I.F. Stone, discussing the merits of true investigative journalism

And I post it because I came across that paragraph right before Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released from North Korea, after they were captured doing what any good journalist is supposed to do.

More driving tips:

-When driving on the left lane, don’t dive through the middle lane to the right lane in order to get to your exit. Not only is that extraordinarily dangerous, but it considerably slows down traffic as well. If you must go across an entire highway, move one lane at a time, keeping careful watch of your speed.

-Seat belts, Seat belts, Seat belts.

-Look in the rear view mirror once in a while. It won’t kill you, and it might actually save you and people around you some aggravation.